Las Vegas’ First Legal Cannabis Lounge Goes Up in Smoke

Posted on: April 18, 2025, 01:22h. 

Last updated on: April 18, 2025, 01:42h.

Corey Levitan Read More
Expertise: Commercial Gaming, Entertainment, Expert Insight, Las Vegas, Restaurants, Las Vegas Myths.
  • Nevada’s first legal cannabis consumption lounge, Smoke and Mirrors at Thrive Cannabis Marketplace, has closed after operating for only a year
  • No explanation was provided for the sudden closure, but businesses don’t close in Las Vegas if they are financially successful

Nevada’s first state-licensed cannabis consumption lounge, Smoke and Mirrors from Thrive Cannabis Marketplace, closed its doors on Thursday, a little over a year after it opened.

Smoke and Mirrors, Nevada’s first legal cannabis consumption lounge, has apparently been consumed by a lack of business. (Image: opentable.com)

A Thrive employee confirmed the closure to Casino.org, though the employee wouldn’t give a reason. Neither reps for Thrive, nor its CEO, Mitch Britten, returned our emails seeking an explanation, either.

However, as our colleague Vital Vegas likes to say, there are only two reasons that anything fails in Las Vegas — a lack of business or a sex scandal. And there was no sex scandal at Smoke and Mirrors.

Smoke and Mirrors opened behind the Strip at 2976 S. Sammy Davis Jr. Drive in February 2024, offering a menu of cannabis products, allowing guests to enjoy flower, concentrates, pre-rolls, and infused food and beverage menu items.

It had to open at least 1,500 feet from a licensed casino because of federal and state law requirements. Though legal to purchase in Nevada since 202??, Cannabis remains classified as a Schedule 1 narcotic by the US Drug Enforcement Agency. That’s the same classification as heroin, LSD, and ecstasy.

The regulation means there are no dispensaries on the Strip or in downtown Las Vegas along Fremont Street — despite a dozen retail shops that attempt to pass off non-psychoactive hemp as real weed in the tourist corridors.

These Laws are Lit

People aged 21 and older are allowed to purchase cannabis from a number of legal Nevada dispensary. However they have nowhere to legally consume it unless staying at a private residence or Airbnb.

Smoking cannabis in any public place is illegal, according to Nevada statute NRS 678D.500. And no Las Vegas hotel allows cannabis smoking in any of its rooms other than the Lexi, which allows it on its fourth four. (However, that may not last since the owners of the off-Strip, non-gaming hotel are also trying to sell it, as we reported last June.)

Nevada lawmakers tried to remedy Las Vegas’ legal cannabis conundrum in 2021 by passing Assembly Bill 341. The statute formed a legal framework for cannabis consumption lounges.

After Smoke and Mirrors, the dispensary Planet 13 opened Las Vegas’ second consumption lounge in April. Located at 2548 W. Desert Inn Road — also at least 1,500 feet from a casino — Dazed remains open, according to the dispensary’s publicist.

The only other Las Vegas locale that legally allows 21-year-olds to legally smoke the weed they can legally buy in Las Vegas is the Vegas Tasting Room. Located inside the NuWu Cannabis Marketplace, five miles north of the Strip, the lounge circumvents regulatory approval by being located on tribal land.

Puff, Puff, They Pass

Some of the comments left below a tweet from Las Vegas Locally, which broke the news of Smoke and Mirrors’ closure on Friday morning, suggest why business may not have lived up to expectations. (A September 2023 press release from Thrive called Smoke and Mirrors “the future of cannabis lifestyle, culture and hospitality.”)